Tips To Reduce Sugar In Diets

High sugar diets have been associated with increasing your risk of tooth decay, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The reports states the American Heart Association recommends daily calories from added sugar shouldn't exceed more than 150 calories for men and 100 calories for women. Start by implementing small changes to reduce your sugar intake to avoid going cold turkey.

Beverages

Sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda, fruit juice and iced tea contribute a significant number of calories to your diet as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you're a heavy soda drinker wean yourself off gradually by diluting half a glass of regular soda with diet soda, continue diluting until your taste buds get used to diet soda alone. If you don't like the taste of plain water try naturally flavored low calorie water, once you adjust to the taste, flavor water yourself by adding a slice of lemon, lime or orange until you move onto just plain water.

Snacks

Regular snacks help keep your energy levels up throughout the day, but it's important to choose healthy snacks over sugar-laden candy bars and baked treats. Opt for healthier alternatives -- make your own fruit smoothies with your favorite fruits, low-fat plain yogurt and skimmed milk, instead of having high-sugar sweets. But watch out -- some brands of yogurt contain as much as 44 g of sugar per 227 g serving, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Add your own chopped fruit to unflavored yogurt to control the amount of sugar you're eating. Replace cookies with high-fiber crackers.

Food Labels

Pay attention to food labels when you're out shopping. Food labels list the quantity of sugar but don't differentiate between added sugars and natural sugars. Manufacturers list the order in which ingredients appear by weight in the product, with the largest quantity ingredient listed first. The FDA recommends familiarizing yourself with the common names used for added sugars such as glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose and maltose, so you can determine whether a product is high in added sugars or not.

Sugar Alternatives

There are many natural and artificial alternatives to sugar that you can use to satisfy your sweet tooth. Artificial sweeteners contain no calories and are a convenient way to sweeten beverages. Natural sugar alternatives such as honey, maple syrup, date sugar and stevia, which is 300 times sweeter than sugar, can be used to replace sugar in some recipes.